


Philosophia Naturalis

by empyrean



Category: DCU - Comicverse, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-07
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:16:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empyrean/pseuds/empyrean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And their souls walk beside them. Apart from Batman's, whose daemon disappears for days at a time. And Superman, because he doesn't have one. And Tim wonders how stupid some people can be that they didn't notice that nice normal Clark didn't have a daemon.</p><p>Or, the DC universe - His Dark Materials edition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. skyway

Idris settles when he’s twelve. Quite early, but then he always has been certain about what he is. It’s her shape that’s the surprise. He expected something routine, uninteresting. He never liked the idea that someone could look at Idris and instantly know everything about him. So something like his father’s Serinel, a faded tricolour beagle, rather than Lilida, his mother’s hummingbird-daemon. Unassuming. Nobody would dig beyond what they know about dog daemons. They’d look and then leave him alone.

He’s not Robin, not yet, no responsibilities or calls to duty beyond those of an only child. He doesn’t have the suit or the scars, doesn’t know what it’s like to consider those beyond his blood relations family. No reason for Idris to be anything but domestic.

But when they’re chasing the wind down the main street in Gotham, well after curfew but alive and confident and laughing at the sting of dirt, Idris changes with a tug at his chest that feels so final he knows that _this_ is it. She wings upwards as high as she dares, diving between streetlamps, swooping to brush her wingtips across his head.

When she perches on the back of a bench, she cocks her head at him and blinks her fierce black eyes.

‘Well?’ She puffs up her feathers, shy and defiant both. Daring him to look and stop loving her. He pulls off his jumper and knots it over his hand, holds out the lump to Idris until she tilts her head again, eyes narrowed in pleased understanding. She jumps from the bench and swoops up to his hand. He can feel her claws even through the makeshift glove.

‘You’ll do.’

‘We’ll do.’ She corrects, voice already somehow lower and firmer than he ever remembers it being.

_This is me_ , he thinks, as he runs home with Idris’ wings by his ear and freedom singing in his mind. _This is all of me. Us._

Later will come Bruce and Amyn, Dick and Levitka. But that is much later. Now it’s just a boy running through Gotham with a Lanner falcon screeching to anyone listening.

_We will definitely do._


	2. call of the wild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce

It’s quite possible he’s jealous the first time he meets Amyn. Not so much her form – but yes, there’s that too, she’s huge and dignified and beautiful in a terrifying wild-animal sort of way. Which is what he’s jealous of. Somehow they’ve convinced everyone that Amyn is just a very large dog, rather than what she is.

Maybe it’s the way he’s Brucie in public. Amyn tucks herself under the nearest table, but wags her bushy tail and dog-smiles at anyone who looks at her – open mouth and rolling tongue but her lips carefully curled over the long white teeth.

Tim knows what she is from the moment he meets her.

One of his father’s endless business parties. He’s playing the model child, complete with suit and a bored-polite expression. Idris – shifting uneasily on his shoulder, they’ve never liked crowds – spots Amyn sat underneath one of the long oak dining tables and glides down to the floor in a clatter of talons.

The other daemons skirt round her, even then. Perhaps they know something, in their dust-animal bones, that their humans could never fully know. A shape and sound and look that triggers unease. He’s researched everything there is to know about Batman and Bruce Wayne, but he’s never found more than a passing reference to his daemon, and never a picture of her. The unease she conjures making few people willing to look at her for very long. There’s no reason to connect this dog with the man laughing in the centre of the crowd, the falseness he knows is there making Tim’s teeth grate.

Idris likes her, which says all there needs to be said about Idris. About Tim. From what he can hear – Idris dragging his mind away, intent on conversation even when Tim’s smooth ‘how do you do’ ‘well thank you’ ‘my father...’ ‘oh you’re too kind’s falter, concentration splitting at the seams – Amyn is clever and sharp and wry, and answers Idris’ questions without acting like she is speaking to a child (and if he loves her for anything, he will always love her just for that).

He isn’t sure who Amyn is the daemon of, not then, but it only takes the work of a second to work out _what_ she is. Someone drops their champagne, a great tinkling of shattered glass. Only a few glances from the people nearby but Amyn’s head swings up from her conversation with Idris, ears pricked, muscles tensed and teeth half-bared in a gesture more often seen in a nature documentary. Nobody else sees it, but once the guests have left Tim and Idris spend the rest of the night tucked in bed with an encyclopaedia, flicking through pages and making comparisons until they’re certain. Later, this masquerade of normalcy will make sense.

He still can’t tell whether Amyn is one or one of the dog breeds tweaked to look like one, but that’s them all over. Is Bruce pretending to be Batman or Batman pretending to be Bruce? Who knows. But whatever Amyn is, it’s the perfect disguise.

Nobody would suspect Bruce to be Batman. Nobody would suspect Amyn to be a wolf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if this is going to continue being short segments, I've got a part written that's far more self-contained story but we'll see what happens.
> 
> I was torn between making Amyn obviously a gray wolf (and passing in society because they're both very good actors) and a cross-breed or genetically modified dog (like an Utonagan) despite the fact that mods oviously don't appear naturally. So I left it up in the air. I'm indecisive like that.
> 
> I always imagine Amyn as amazingly fluffy and cuddly-looking. Because Bruce really isn't.


End file.
